I understand what you're saying here, but the problem for us is that we don't assign volunteers until we know they want to work. I have 400 volunteers in my system, and let's say 50 say they're interested in the book fair. I email those 50 (but don't assign them) and have them tell me if and when they want to work. Out of the 50, maybe 15 actually end up working, and that's not enough. (And if I originally assigned all 50, now I'd have to go back and adjust the records for the 35.) So now I need to reach out to the remaining 350, who have not selected "book fair" as an interest, without emailing the original 50. Is that a better example?

You actually don't need to assign them - try following these steps

1. Go to Events
2. Click on Assign
3. Click on recruit volunteers
4. Select the interest in question "book fair"
5. Select Search
6. Select All
7. Email selected

Note - you have not assigned anyone yet - just emailed them

8. If you don't get enough people then follow these steps again but don't put any interests in and hit search to see everyone. You will see the folks that you contacted already b/c they will have "last email contact" date for this event.

Feel free to call if this does not make sense but I am fairly certain it accomplishes exactly what you want.

- Mike

On the reminder emails - it would be helpful to explain how you would want it to work. Tough to have an automated email that you can change on the fly which is kind of what you are asking for here.

Right now, the standard wording is something like this:
Dear "volunteer name", This is a reminder that you are scheduled to volunteer for "event" on "monthday" from "xtime" to "ytime". Please remember to let us know if you need to alter your plans. Thanks so much for volunteering; your time makes a big difference.

A couple of the problems with this that we keep trying to adjust for:

1) Event name: when we list the event name, we might say "staple monthly newsletter." That's fine for the event list, but it comes off as really bad grammar, or just something weird, when it goes in a reminder email. So, we have to be really careful about how we name the event to begin with.

2) No contact person. The reminder comes from the system generally, so if you do have to alter your plans, you don't really know who to contact. Plus, it could be that the volunteer coordinator originally worked all this out with you, but you are going to report to someone entirely different.

3) No event place. In case you forgot where you were told to go, there's no place to put in a location.

4) Let's say we're going to provide pizza/snack for the volunteers at this particular event. It would be nice to remind them of that.

Obviously, if communication was done properly to begin with, the volunteer would know all this stuff. But--sometimes people just forget. So, we'd just like the reminders to be a little more detailed. I guess I kind of am asking for the ability to change it on the fly! I think there's a recruiting email you can change for each event...some general wording comes out when you first try to recruit someone to help with an event, but you can override it if you want--that's the type of thing I'm looking for.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Finally, I'd like it if I could have a little more flexibility on searching for volunteers. For example, let's say that I select all the volunteers who signed up to help with the book fair, and I sent them an email. But I didn't get enough help, so now I want to email everyone else. There's not a way for me to exclude all those people by saying pick all of these, but then exclude this group. There are a couple of other times where I've wanted to exclude certain groups of people, and there's no easy way to do it.

If you send your email through ASSIGN VOLUNTEERS, RECRUIT VOLUNTEERS then you can see the last time you sent the person an email about this topic and only select the people you want to email.
</font>[/QUOTE]I understand what you're saying here, but the problem for us is that we don't assign volunteers until we know they want to work. I have 400 volunteers in my system, and let's say 50 say they're interested in the book fair. I email those 50 (but don't assign them) and have them tell me if and when they want to work. Out of the 50, maybe 15 actually end up working, and that's not enough. (And if I originally assigned all 50, now I'd have to go back and adjust the records for the 35.) So now I need to reach out to the remaining 350, who have not selected "book fair" as an interest, without emailing the original 50. Is that a better example?

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />I knew I forgot something before.... It would also be nice if the system would stop turning apostropes into question marks in the texts of the email messages sent through the system.

I do see that happening when you cut and paste from Word. It is something we are trying to fix but it is tough because people have many different Word set-ups. I have not seen it happen when you cut and paste from outlook or type directly into the system. If you are having that problem -let us know.

Thanks for the feedback

Mike </font>[/QUOTE]Ah ha!! I thought this was just a known general glitch that had something to do with my computer settings. I had no idea that it had to do with my habit of composing my emails in Word first, then cutting and pasting them into PTO Manager.... You might want to consider rewriting that warning that's in the PTO Manager notes ("tips for sending emails") to make that more clear?

[ 10-12-2006, 02:36 AM: Message edited by: mum24kids ]

Mum24kids,

Good point on the interests - you can see the last time someone accessed the system if you download the find volunteer screen into excel but I hear what you are saying.

On the reminder emails - it would be helpful to explain how you would want it to work. Tough to have an automated email that you can change on the fly which is kind of what you are asking for here.

Finally, I'd like it if I could have a little more flexibility on searching for volunteers. For example, let's say that I select all the volunteers who signed up to help with the book fair, and I sent them an email. But I didn't get enough help, so now I want to email everyone else. There's not a way for me to exclude all those people by saying pick all of these, but then exclude this group. There are a couple of other times where I've wanted to exclude certain groups of people, and there's no easy way to do it.

If you send your email through ASSIGN VOLUNTEERS, RECRUIT VOLUNTEERS then you can see the last time you sent the person an email about this topic and only select the people you want to email.

I knew I forgot something before.... It would also be nice if the system would stop turning apostropes into question marks in the texts of the email messages sent through the system.

I do see that happening when you cut and paste from Word. It is something we are trying to fix but it is tough because people have many different Word set-ups. I have not seen it happen when you cut and paste from outlook or type directly into the system. If you are having that problem -let us know.

Thanks for the feedback

Mike

Debbieomi,

I think you will find that PTO Manager does allow for quick input of volunteer hours. I also think that your group could get away with fewer events and then using tasks to list the specific job a person has done. For example - if you have 20 people work movie night, to enter all those hours into the system you would simply:

1. Go to ASSIGN under movie night
2. Type the volunteers' names right into the space provided.
3. If you want more detailed data on what they did, you could enter that under tasks.
4. Put in the total number of hours worked for that volunteer
5. Go to the next volunteer

Since you generally have fewer events than volunteers - it should be easier to record hours under events than under volunteers. To record hours under volunteers would require looking each one up. Also - if you recorded hours that way, it would be tough to ensure you don't accidentally record hours twice because you will see hours worked but you won't know for what.

Hope this helps -